Tales of the Ever Tree
by karmagrl76
Summary: This was inspired by the episode The Monster at the End of This Book. I wondered if there were other living prophets like Chuck, what they would be like. Sam, Dean, Charles, Castiel, and a slew of others will be present.
1. Chapter 1: The Prophet Goldman

**Tales of the Ever Tree**

"_The Tree of Knowledge grew fast by, Knowledge of Good bought dear by knowing ill."—John Milton_

**Book One: The Prophet Goldman**

Esther's fingers throbbed from arthritis and her head hurt from a revelation induced migraine worsened by the "clickety-clack" of her Underwood. The loud noise she had heard earlier and the flickering of lights outside meant her last story was nearing its end. The new visions needed to be recorded before three in the morning. She scowled at the page as the grandfather clock in her study chimed midnight, hating to be rushed. This would be the last thing she ever wrote. It had to be perfect.

She sighed, ripped the paper out of the typewriter, and started over.

_**The blank page curled inside my typewriter mocks and frightens me with words I have not yet written. I am troubled, not by writer's block, but by the story I have become entangled. I pray for God to deliver me from this burden, and if He can not, for Him to give me the courage and wisdom to continue my work.**_

Three visions in one night. It was a record. Devine revelation was a rare thing, even for her, and a handful here and there was the most she'd expect in the old days. Esther hadn't had one in years. It was just as well since most of what she foresaw was disturbing beyond words. The headaches weren't enjoyable either. It came as bitter comfort that these three would be the last. She needed to record them all before dawn.

The clock in her study chimed midnight.

_**This is the first revelation given to me:**_

_**I was lost in a vast desert wilderness, dieing of thirst and hunger when I came upon a soldier wearing the old uniform of the Polish army. He stood guard under the shade of two fruit trees. The first was a plum tree, twisted and decayed, its fruit lying in a rotting heap on the sand. The second, an apricot tree, was striving and lush, its ripe yellow fruit weighed its branches down. The scent of the plums was sweet as honey in spite of their rot, and I ached to have one.**_

_**I asked the soldier for some water and he offered me a sip from his canteen. The water was sweet and tasted of apricots. My thirst was quenched after only one sip, yet the smell of the plums still enticed me. I asked for one, but the soldier warned me that the fruit of that tree was poisonous.**_

"_**All who eat of that tree perish in agonizing death," he said to me.**_

_**Unable to resist, I did not heed his words. He did nothing to stop me as I snatched a plum and bit into it. The taste was surprisingly sweet but as I swallowed, my throat burned and my gut ached as if I had just eaten molten rock. I clutched my stomach and fell to the ground writhing in pain.**_

_**The soldier fixed his eyes upon me, without anger or pity, without any indication of emotion.**_

"_**Great is your burden," he had said. "Great is the responsibility you now bear."**_

_**As he said this, I heard his true voice, not that of anything human or animal, but of some creature unknown to mortal existence, and his true voice was the piercing wail of a million stars being born. I cringed at the sound and looked upon his face, his true face, and it was like staring into a million suns. He raised his arms as if to hold back the sky, and the arms became fiery wings, unfurled and beautiful and awful to behold.**_

_**I turned my eyes away, clutching my stomach and my head, and cried, "What is happening to me?"**_

"_**You have eaten of the poisoned fruit," he explained. "You will see what is real and what is not. You will hear what is true and what is lie. The knowledge of the ages is yours to command. You will be powerful, you will be mighty, but you will perish, for the rot of the tree is now within you."**_

"_**Why didn't you stop me?"**_

"_**Why did you not stop yourself? Did you not believe me when I said the fruit was poisonous?"**_

"_**I couldn't stop!" I growled in pain. "You knew I wouldn't be able to stop myself, but you just stood there and watched, didn't you?"**_

"_**There is always a choice even when there appears to be none."**_

_**I shouted and cursed and begged the creature to take this curse away from me, to end my suffering even if it meant killing me.**_

"_**The plum cannot be stuck back on the tree; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less."**_

_**When he said this, I wept. I knew I was given a wonderful gift, but the pain of bearing it was too great. I begged once more.**_

"_**I have it in my power to relieve your pain temporarily, but the burden of the knowledge you have gained is still yours to bear. Do you understand?"**_

_**I nodded my acquiescence and he knelt beside me and gave me another sip from his canteen. The creature became the soldier once again; his fiery wings shimmered and faded in the arid desert air like a mirage on a hot day. His voice was human and soothing, and as I drank, the burning inside me subsided but I knew the horror of what I had done could never be erased.**_

_**As I drank, the sky grew dark and the wind howled. The branches rustled above our heads. We both looked up to see what was wrong and I screamed as a terrible snake fell upon the soldier and devoured him.**_

Esther read over the passage, bewildered. This revelation wasn't new. In fact, it had been her first. She remembered receiving it the night before the Nazi's invaded Poland. While the city of Łódź was bombarded by enemy fire on all sides, all she could think to do was write down her silly dream. It had woken something inside of her, and she often wondered what her life would have been like if she had resisted the temptation to eat the fruit of that damn tree. Eve, the first woman, must have wondered the same thing, back in the garden.

The soldier hadn't lied. The pain of the dream was still fresh in her mind and not just from the burning in her stomach. Her mind had been bombarded with esoteric knowledge and images that lost their meaning upon waking. She stared intently at the page struggling to put into words what she had seen and felt, but it was like trying to explain how magic worked or deciphering some strange forgotten language. It couldn't be translated into mortal words.

The pain of bearing it all those years was the worst part. It hadn't killed her or rotted her from the inside out as it had the monster in the tree, but sometimes she wished it had, just so there would be an end to it. Esther had received a particularly important nugget of knowledge, something the soldier had given her for safe keeping, and whatever he gave her to fend off the pain couldn't hide the truth of what he had done. This particular bit of knowledge, she no longer held. Thinking of the snake and the part it would play, Esther knew that too was a bitter comfort.

The clock struck one.

_**This is the second revelation given to me:**_

_**I was running down a forest path, chased by the desert beast. And in this forest, it was always night, never day, and bitter cold, but I could see the path in front of me and knew I would be safe as long as I stuck to the path. There were many whispering voices all around me, familiar voices of loved ones that had long perished. They were my mother and father and sisters and brothers. They were the people I thought I had lost forever.**_

"_**Leave the path and come to us," the voices said, "and we will be together always."**_

_**I cried bitter tears because I wanted to follow the voices, to be with the ones I had lost, but I knew leaving the path meant death. I ran faster, always following the path.**_

_**The path led to a clearing with a solitary tree, the apricot tree of my desert dream. Sitting under the base of the tree was a young girl of sixteen. She wore the blue and white striped uniform of the camps and her hair was cropped short, almost to the scalp. The girl was staring at the sky with her hands raised above her head, palms open.**_

"_**A terrible beast is chasing me," I warned her, "If it sees you, it will kill you too!"**_

_**"I cannot leave," the girl said unconcerned, eyes still gazing at the sky, "I'm waiting for the stars to fall. Someone has to catch them before the die."**_

_**As she said this, thousands of stars fell from the sky in yellow burning arcs. The girl reached out to save as many as she could. Some had fallen into the palms of her hands, burning and sizzling her flesh as they did so. Some had fallen to the ground at her feet whole, but changed forever. Most burned to ash and disappeared.**_

_**I wanted to help her, but there was nothing I could do.**_

Esther's eyes welled with tears at the memory of so many dead stars. In her dream, the stars had been shaped like the yellow badges made of the Star of David the Nazis had forced her people to wear during the war, and while she dreamed, she could see each star as a number and every number as a person. When she woke, the memory would leave her, though she frantically tried to remember as many as she could. It was as if remembering these people would make it so they never died, but like the end of this revelation, she was totally helpless.

This second revelation was an old one too. The girl, she later learned, was named Chaya. She had been someone important, but her time had come and gone.

The clock struck two.

_**This was the third and final revelation given to me. It will be my last:**_

_**I dreamed that I finished typing my final revelation and fell asleep at my desk. At three o'clock, the gong of the grandfather clock in my study woke me and I found the beast standing before me, watching me as I opened my bleary eyes. The light of the lamp revealed its purple bloated face to be as rotten as the plums from the desert and its lips were stained red. My body shook with fear and my heart raced, though I had seen his coming many times.**_

"_**I know why you have come," I said to the beast, "but I cannot give you what you want."**_

"_**I don't believe you," it said smiling with teeth stained red and sharp as the fangs of a snake.**_

"_**Believe or don't believe," I replied. "It's all the same to me."**_

"_**Give me what I want and I'll share it with you."**_

"_**You won't share anything. It isn't in your nature."**_

"_**I'll make the agreement binding."**_

"_**I don't care. I don't want anything you'd be willing to give me."**_

_**Even through its rotting features, the beast looked skeptical. "You would turn down eternity?"**_

"_**My soul is already eternal," I said. "When I die I'll be with my Father. Can you say the same?"**_

_**It glared and hissed at me. When it gained its composure it said, "I can bring your people back to you. It will be like they had never died."**_

"_**I'll see them soon enough," I said, my temper flared. "But where are your people, your brothers and sisters? Where is your Father? When this is over, I will be with my family, safe and warm, and you will be alone, rotting for eternity. No one will weep for you because you are all alone!"**_

_**"We will see," it hissed and lunged for me as it had the soldier in my desert dream.**_

_**It bit into my throat, twisting my mind with its poisoned magic. He infected me with horrible images that would drive most souls insane. I knew he would not find what he was looking for, but I also knew he wouldn't kill me until he was certain I could tell him nothing useful. It made me both glad and regretful that I had given up my burden. If I still had the thing he had sought I would have given it to him without hesitation just to make the pain end. I prayed for death many times.**_

Esther read over the passage and sighed. She was tired, but didn't want to sleep. Sleeping meant waking and waking meant pain. She was trapped in her own horror story and there was nothing she could do about it.

She wondered what Alice would think of that. Her granddaughter often complained that she didn't like to read her grandmother's old stories, the ones she called her "Chaya stories". They were too depressing, she would say. Alice could never understand why Esther would end them on such a sad note.

"Why does Chaya die at the end of the story, bubbe?" she would ask. "Why can't she trick the evil Commandant and get away? If I were the author, that's what I'd do."

"I'm sorry, zeisele," Esther would try to explain. "Sometimes life doesn't give us a choice. That is how I saw it happen, so that is how I wrote it."

The explanation was never enough for little Alice. Esther's stories were just that to the little girl, stories.

"The author can do whatever she wants," Alice had pouted. "I would give my main character a happy ending. Let her have a little of her own back."

Well, there was nothing for that. Poor Chaya's destiny had already been ordained, and there was nothing an old woman could do about it. And she certainly couldn't do for herself what she couldn't do for Chaya. But gazing thoughtfully at the page in her typewriter, Esther recalled the words of the soldier.

"There is always a choice," she whispered in the hushed silence of the study, "even when there appears to be none."

Esther forcefully tugged the paper out of her typewriter, found an ink pen in her desk drawer, and scribbled a final addition to her prophesy:

_**When my body dies, you will read these revelations, beast. You will read my final message and will fall into a rage when you read these words: The knowledge you seek has been taken from me, given to someone for safe keeping. You should have eaten from the Ever Tree first. That was a lesson you could have learned from my people, but being the stubborn fool that you are, you thought you knew better than a bunch of mud monkeys. You will die. You will rot. You will lose. No one will weep for you.**_

Esther carefully folded the paper in half, rested her head on her wrinkled hands, and fell asleep with a smile on her face. As she drifted away into a blessedly dreamless sleep, she thought to herself that Alice had been right. Even when the story had to end on a sad note, it was always good when the main character had the last laugh.


	2. Chapter 2: A Daughter of the Commandment

**Book Two: A Daughter of the Commandment**

It took awhile, but she finally found it, the journal her grandmother had given to her.

Alice remembered ripping open the wrapping paper expecting and dreading another book. Bubbe Esther _always_ gave her books.

"It's not the usual gift I give," Bubbe Esther said in her thick polish accent as she watched her open it, and for a second, Alice thought this time things would be different.

Well, it was different she had to admit. It was bound in black leather with the words, _My Journal_ scrawled on the cover. Her mother had warned it was too sophisticated for a girl Alice's age, even though, she later remarked, the leather would make it harder for her to destroy it in one day, as was her daughter's custom—but her grandmother insisted it was the perfect gift for her bat mitzvah.

The thing ended up buried in her closet the same day she received it, unused, just like most of the gifts her grandmother gave her.

Thinking of the past, Alice ran her hand over the cover. The leather was a little cracked with age, but still practically new. She opened the journal to the first page expecting it to be blank and was startled to find it filled with bubbe's shaky handwriting.

_**For my loving Zeisele, who today has become a daughter of the commandment: May all your hopes and dreams and secrets lie within these pages, never to be forgotten. Your destiny is hidden beyond these pages, waiting to be discovered.**_

Alice swallowed a sob as she caressed the page. She reached into her purse lying next to her suitcase, found a pen, and began to write.

_I'm sitting on the faded pink carpet of my old bedroom at my parent's house, scribbling in this silly journal I never had any intention of starting, trying not to cry and failing miserably. I don't like diaries. I'm more at home with a piece of graphite and a sketch pad. Bubbe Esther gave this to me for my bat mitzvah years ago and it's been buried in my closet ever since. She's been bugging me for the past few weeks about it, calling and asking if I ever used it, if I still write in a journal. She even showed up at the apartment couple weeks ago, asking me about it. After all this time, she asks me. It was so irritating._

Alice read over the journal page and wiped a tear from her cheek. No matter how hard she tried, she could never quite convey what she was feeling into words. You could write that you were sad or ashamed or just plain tired, but what did that mean, really? You could be _sad_ when the Saints lost a football game. You could be _ashamed_ when you cheated on an important exam. _Tired_ could mean sleepy or overworked. How did you put grief into words without paint and a canvas? It boggled her.

_She was sitting on the ratty couch in my living room, watching me intently, waiting for my answer._

"_Writing's just not my thing, grandma," I told her. "I don't know what you were thinking when you bought me that thing."_

_Her face fell when I said it. It was like kicking a puppy. Instantly, I realized it was the wrong thing to say, but how do you tell your own grandmother she doesn't know you well enough to buy you an adequate gift? I could kick myself now for feeling that way, but that's how it was._

Her bottom lip quivered, remembering her grandmother's disappointment. Alice had expected the old woman to be annoyed, had expected a lecture about how her generation didn't appreciated what their elders went through and how good they had it now a days. It was the same old spiel Bubbe Esther always gave when she found her granddaughter doing something she found "indecent" like staying out past sunset or, gasp, wearing skirts that revealed her knees or something.

Or when she went against any kind of family tradition. That was the worst possible sin in her grandmother's book of misdeeds. Bubbe Esther had been a writer. Alice's father was a copy write editor for was a retired English professor and her father a copy write editor for Pelican Publishing Company. It had been assumed by all that she would follow in the family's literary footsteps. She had unofficially declared her independence from her family's fate the day she threw that journal into her closet. Years of struggling against that fate had passed and bubbe was still harboring hope.

Instead the anticipated scolding, she gave Alice the same look she had given her when it was discovered by the family she had gotten her first tattoo.

She had still been living at home back then, just turned eighteen. Her shiny new status as a legal adult had made her giddy and stupid enough to follow her best friend and current roommate Jerry's advice to break out of her conservative good girl shell and live a little.

"You're legal now, sweetie," he had said while salaciously sucking on a tootsie pop. "Dive in head first and deal with the consequences later."

Alice couldn't help but smile at the memory. She dove alright, dove right into the first Bourbon Street bar Jerry could sneak her into, drank a ton of tequila, and somehow became convinced that permanently painting her skin was the way to go. Well, she was an artist, so why not treat her body as canvas?

Later, Alice could never figure out what had induced her to choose a set of wings on her shoulder blades. Jerry refused to take responsibility for that decision, having more of a fondness for anything that resembled Brad Pitt. Maybe she had seen one too many episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Whatever the reason, the tequila had taken that secret to its porcelain grave.

Alice's first true act of defiance would have gone unnoticed if her mother hadn't accidentally walked in on her a few weeks later just as she was getting out of the shower. The woman had run out of the bathroom screaming and shouting for her father to "come see what your daughter has done to herself this time!"

They had all gathered around the living room, her father, mother, and Bubbe Esther, who picked an opportune time for a visit just as the dressing down had begun to get truly heated. Mr. Goldman had been livid, pacing and going on and on about how no daughter living under his roof was going to defile her body in that manner. Alice remembered sarcastically asking what manner she was allowed to defile her own body, and received a burning glare for asserting herself.

All her mother cared about was what the neighbors would say and how they were going to explain it to the rabbi since Alice wouldn't be allowed a proper Jewish burial if it was found out. She didn't bother telling them this wouldn't be a problem since she now considered herself an Agnostic bordering on Atheist. She figured she was in enough trouble as it was without adding fuel to the fire.

While her parents talked of laser surgery and tattoo removal, Bubbe Esther sat in her father's easy chair, eyes silently fixed on her granddaughter with the saddest look Alice had ever seen. She had been rubbing the faded blue numbered tattoo on her left forearm.

Up until that point, Alice had felt defiant and proud of what she had done. For the first time in her life, she had gone against her parents' plans for how her life should be. It was freeing! But the way that old woman had stared at her as if her granddaughter had physically died made Alice feel a deep, burning shame. It angered her that she should feel this just as she was starting to gain some independence over her life. She never truly forgave Bubbe for making her feel that way.

_Finally, I told her I lost it sometime after she gave it to me. The part about never using it, I kept to myself._

_ "One day you might find you have a use for it,_ _Zeisele," she said, offering to buy me a new one. I politely declined._

_ I tried to smooth things over by offering to sketch some of her stories for my new web comic and I was surprised when she agreed to take me up on my offer. When she said she would look through her old "Chaya" stories, though, I couldn't disguise the hassled look on my face._

Looking back, Alice felt bad about it, but at the time, she couldn't help but feel as if she were being asked to do some hideous chore. She had hoped her grandmother would let her use some of her recent work instead like the stuff she wrote for the _Zoetrope: All-Story_ or _Lilith magazine_. At least most of those stories had happy endings or dealt with subject matter that didn't make you feel like slitting a wrist when you were finished reading it. Her old stories—especially her Chaya stories—were so depressing and dark, probably inspired by her time in the camps, that Alice could barely make it through the first page before setting it down again. If she was forced to read anything, Alice preferred something upbeat.

She had given the old woman a handful of excuses. Busy at work. Busy with school. Exams and boys and anything that came to mind. She had promised to stop by her house when she had the time, with every intention of forgetting to follow through.

Alice scribbled these thoughts down, knowing if her father or mother—hell, if Jerry read a word of this, she would never be able to live down the shame. But diaries were supposed to be about writing the truth even if the truth was as ugly as the person doing the writing.

_She told me not to trouble myself. She would send them to me when it was time, she said. I guess she knew I was never going to show. That was two weeks ago. Now she won't get the chance._

Her tears were flowing in a steady stream, no matter how hard she tried to swallow them back. Alice thought back to the call she received from her mother earlier that morning. She had been half asleep when she picked up the receiver and at first, she thought she was still dreaming when her mother told her Bubbe Esther had been found dead in her study. Mom had been crying so hard when she said it, and Alice had been so groggy, it had taken a moment for the information to set in. When it did, she jolted awake and promised her mother she would drive to Epiphany as soon as she could.

Everything after that was a blur. She remembered throwing clothes into a suitcase while begging Jerry to take care of Tallulah, the black and white collie they shared. He forced her to slow down long enough to explain what had happened. When she broke the news, he broke out in tears. Bubbe had always treated him as if he were apart of the family. She never judged him for being gay or made comments about his "lifestyle choice" like her father or mother did. Alice figured she knew what it was like to be treated like dirt for being different and didn't see the point in chastising Jerry for something he couldn't and shouldn't have to change.

He promised to take care of Tallulah and would definitely make it to the funeral.

_They say she was murdered. Mysterious circumstances and all that. I over heard mom and dad talking about it in the kitchen after they thought I had gone up to bed. Blood was mentioned. A lot of blood. Everywhere, mom said. Nothing was taken, so it probably wasn't a home burglary gone wrong._

_She was just a harmless old woman. She survived the hunger and freezing cold and disease and just pain old cruelty of a concentration camp, but someone snuffed out her life like it was nothing and we don't even know why._

That was the worst part, Alice thought, not knowing who had done this terrible thing or why it was done in the first place. She hoped there would be answers soon. Maybe things would be easier if there was someone other than herself to blame. Maybe she could sleep without fear of what she might see when she closed her eyes.

And that was the thing, she thought, as her pen hovered over the page. She had seen this—her mother's phone call, the closet, the journal, her grandmother's inscription—the very night her grandmother was killed. But that couldn't be possible, she told her self and she tried her best to come up with some rational excuse. Her mind was obviously playing tricks on her, making her believe she dreamed something when she didn't. It was the shock of her grandmother's death. But seeing her grandmother's scribbled words on the cover page made her wonder. It also scared the hell out of her. Watching her grandmother die had been the worst thing she had dreamed that night, but not the only terrible thing. If her nightmares were coming true, more horror awaited.

Alice debated whether or not to leave that part out, but decided what the hell? She already admitted to being a poor excuse for a granddaughter. Why not go all the way and admit she was a nutcase as well?

_This is going to sound insane, but the night before she died, I dreamed a monster sneaked into her house and killed her. I dreamed of mom's phone call and sitting on this stupid pink carpet writing in this stupid journal. The last thing I dreamed was of Bubbe Esther sitting on the bed next to me, telling me she had left something important with me and that I had to guard it with my life._

_I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. It was mom, just like in my dream._

_It's probably just a coincidence, my subconscious mind dealing with the guilt of blowing her off. I don't know. I thought writing it in this journal would make me feel better, would make the insane seem less so, but all I feel is this terrible guilt and a feeling that I've lost something precious. I'm going to keep writing in this thing. Bubbe Esther would have liked that._

She put down the pen, sighed, and read over the words. Not even close to adequate, she thought. But as she dug in her purse for her sketching pencils, she realized it was a start.


	3. Chapter 3: Keystone Cops

**Book Three: Keystone Cops**

_**Journal of Alice Goldman April 27, 2011:**_

_ I've been condemned to wait in the parking lot at the police station while dad tries to explain Jewish burial customs to the Sheriff. The police refuse to release Bubbe Esther's body for burial. We came to see what the hold was and had an ugly confrontation with the detective in charge of the case. Well, technically speaking _I_ had a confrontation with the detective, thus my exiled status._

_In my defense, Sergeant Mark Elwood was more than "bad cop" rude to us. He was out and out belligerent, and not just because he thinks a member of the family had something to do grandma's murder—an idea that is idiotic to the extreme._

_After dad asked if we should get a lawyer, Sergeant Elwood made his intentions crystal clear when he said: "I'm sure that won't be too hard for 'you people' to find one. With a name like Goldman, you probably got a whole family full of ambulance chasers."_

_ He didn't spice up the sentence with the word "kike", but you could tell it was dancing at the tip of his tongue, aching to fly out of his mouth._

_Dad just stared at him, too shocked to respond. It might have been better if I had followed his example, kept my mouth shut. I had dealt with enough bigoted bull shit as a kid to know how to handle a situation like this, but it had been a hard few days and an even harder few nights. I have not been sleeping well, so I was just a tad tetchy when it was revealed the man in charge of my grandmother's murder investigation is a bold as brass bigot._

_If that Sheriff and those two FBI guys hadn't shown up and broke up the fight when he they did, I'd probably be in jail right now for shoving my foot up Sergeant Elwood's fat cop ass. He told the Sergeant to take a walk and took my father into his office to talk things over. He seemed okay I guess, real understanding, but there's something strange about him._

_As I was leaving, I happened to look over my shoulder to find the Sheriff staring at me. He was smiling in a way that unnerved me. It wasn't the smirk of red neck superiority that Sgt. Elwood had worn, or even the smile of a suspicious cop who thinks he's finally caught his "perp". It was...I don't know. Unfriendly? No, not that. Expectant? That's not quite it either._

_It reminded me of Richard Bailey, the worm who took me to the senior prom. No charm. All hands. Wouldn't take no for an answer. At least, not until I said no with my knee and ten years worth of martial arts classes. It was like that, but not sexual. Like he wants something from me that I might not be willing to give. Maybe It would be easier to explain if I did a sketch of him later…_

"What the hell kind of name is Barkiel?" was the first thing that came out of Dean's mouth when Castiel appeared in their hotel room in Shreveport to recruit them for their new and fabulous mission.

They had just got back from cleaning out a vampire nest in Shreveport, Louisiana and were aching to cool their heels until the next job. Sam had been sitting on his bed, surfing the net on his laptop while Dean raided the mini-fridge for a beer. Cas appeared mid-swallow, causing Dean to choke and gasp. Without bothering to say hello, he told them an angel named Barkiel was missing and he needed their help finding him.

"The kind that belongs to an angel with the power to rip apart every atom in your body," Cas said balefully. "He was the archangel in charge of guarding a prophet named Esther Goldman."

"Hold the phone," said Dean, nearly spilling the beer again. "You telling us Chuck has a buddy out there?"

Charles Shurley, or the Prophet Chuck as Dean like to call him, was a paperback writer, drunkard, and prophet extraordinaire. They had become uncomfortably aware of his existence over two years ago in a comic book store when they discovered his _Supernatural_ series, a series of books that depicted their lives in embarrassingly minute detail. Sam, Dean, and even Charles himself later learned that he was the prophet in charge of writing the _Book of Winchester_ and protected by an archangel that could destroy anything it viewed as a threat to Chuck's life.

"I don't think Charles has many friends," Cas said after a confused silence. "There are those women he calls and gives money for visiting—"

"What Dean means," Sam said interrupted, "is we were unaware there was more than one prophet active."

"There is some confusion over just how active Esther was at the time of Barkiel's disappearance. She was the author of the _Book of Chaya_, but that chronicle was ended in 1944 when the main character of her stories died."

The Winchesters exchanged uneasy looks. Someday—possibly some day soon—Chuck would be inactive. It was a disquieting thought that one day Chuck's stories would end, too, for the obvious reasons.

"She received a new revelation just before Barkiel's disappearance," Cas continued, "the first in over sixty-five years. We think it might have something to do with a recent string of angelic disappearances, but no one knows what that revelation was."

"A string of disappearances?" Sam sputtered. "You're telling us this isn't the first incident?"

"What with the war between Raphael's faction and my own, the missing angels at first were chalked up to battle casualties. But when the guardian of a prophet disappears, everyone takes notice."

"Maybe Raphael had something to do with this?"

"The guardians are considered off limits. Not even Raphael would bloody his hands that way."

"Well, of course! Who'd write about his great and wondrous exploits then?" Dean said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. "Seriously Cas, what makes you think Raphael didn't take it into his head to escalate hostilities?"

"If he had, he wouldn't have gone after someone under his allegiance," Cas said. "Barkiel is under his command."

Dean stared at him. "Well, that's not good."

"No," Cas said, stoically. "It isn't. He's asked for a cease fire until we can find out who has taken Esther's guardian and why."

"You think someone is trying to start up a new faction in this war of yours?"

"Possibly."

"Maybe whoever kidnapped the angel protecting Esther wanted to keep the revelation from getting out?" asked Sam. "Did that ever occur to you?"

"Of course, it has."

"And Raphael won't tell you what she saw?"

"He doesn't know. Barkiel was taken before he could report back."

Dean eyed Cas suspiciously.

"I thought you guys sent these," he waved his free hand in the air, trying to find the word, "vision thingies. How can Raphael possibly not know what she saw?"

"These 'vision thingies', as you call them," Cas said contemptuously choking on the words, "are divine revelation sent by God. Only God, the prophet, and the prophet's guardian would be privy to it before the revelation is reported and set to print."

"Then why don't you ask her what she saw?" Sam asked. "She does know she's a prophet, right?"

"She has known for some time that her writings were divinely inspired, but retrieving her last prophesy will be a problem," Cas said with a frown.

"What, she was prophetnapped?" Dean asked.

"No, someone killed her shortly after her guardian was taken. When her soul was collected and questioned, she didn't remember a thing that happened within the past year."

"Someone mind wiped her soul?" Sam asked. "Is that even possible?"

"Apparently so," said Cas.

They stared at him.

"Well that…bodes," Dean said taking another huge swig of his beer.

"Tell us more about these disappearances," Sam said.

It took over an hour and half a case of beer for Castiel to tell them the entire story. The first to disappear were low level angels, guys that would never be missed. It had been happening since the angels first made their presence known to the Winchesters, back when they were fighting to keep the demon Lilith from breaking the seals. As time went by, more and more of the feathery flock were lost to agents of the apocalypse and what not. Usually, the only thing that was found was the host's dead body and a shadowy set of wings burned where ever the body fell. But sometimes both the host and the body went missing, assumed to be captured, tortured, and kept alive and bound with no hope of ever retrieving the body for purposes unknown.

"I need your help with this," Cas said.

"What, so you can start up your little war again?" Dean snorted. "No friggin way."

"The war is still on, whether between Raphael and me or this new player. I just need to know who it is before he causes more mayhem. How many times have I helped you?"

He gave them an intense stare that had them fidgeting. As tempting as is was to stay out of his angel crap, they did owe him. Cas had stepped in to aid them more than a few times. There was also the fact that something was out there roaming the earth, something with the power to kidnap a high ranking archangel. Anything that scary powerful was worth hunting down before it took it into its head to start going after regular humans.

So after a few more hours of investigation and a little computer hacking on Sam's part, it was discovered that the host body had been found after all.

"According to this," Sam said, reading the screen. "Robert Nguyen was a black jack dealer reported missing over two years ago from his home in Las Vegas, Nevada."

"Ooh, Vegas," Dean squealed with delight. He looked slightly abashed when the other two gave him 'looks', but only slightly. "What? It's been a long time since we been out that way. I could teach Cas how to play twenty-one."

"I know how to count, Dean."

"Can you count cards?" he asked wiggling his eyebrows.

Sam gestured Dean to knock it off and asked, "He's been missing two years. Where the hell was this guy all this time?"

"Two years ago, Brakiel convinced Robert Nguyen to become his vessel," Cas said, reminding the boys that an angel can only take over a human's body without damaging it if the human was not only fit and hardy but willing as well. "A vessel strong enough to handle an archangel is rare, but it has happened before."

"We saw that with Michael," Dean said, recalling the unfortunate incident with their half brother Adam.

"And we don't need to travel to Vegas," Sam said, killing the look of expectant joy in Dean's eyes. "Nguyen's body was found at Big Branch National Park, twenty miles from Esther Goldman's house in Epiphany, Louisiana the same night she was killed."

"I guess we're taking a trip down to Epiphany," Dean sighed. A second later he perked up. "Hey, that's a hop, skip, and a jump away from New Orleans, right? They have a Harrah's Casino and somewhere in the Quarter they make this really cool drink called a Hurricane…"

Dean's words trailed off as Sam and Cas gave him another look of warning. He frowned.

"You guys are no fun."

Sam and Dean marched through the muggy bull pen of the homicide division of the Epiphany police department, holding onto their suit jackets owing to the heat. They were led by Officer Ginny Holmes, the cute little duty officer Dean had charmed into helping them find the detective in charge of the Goldman case as well as the mysterious demise of the once was lost but now was found Robert "Bobby" Nguyen, AKA, Barkiel.

While Dean was busy appreciating the backside of Holmes' regulation uniform—a uniform she filled well in Dean's opinion—Sam surveyed the room.

The Winchesters weren't the only ones suffering from the heat. Jackets were hanging off of chairs and shirts were sticking to sweat covered bodies in the hot, damp air. It was due to a sudden heat wave and a faulty cooling system, according to Officer Holmes, who apologized profusely for the heat. In spite of this, Sam couldn't help but notice there was a computer on every desk, good ones that looked to be well serviced.

The police station in the town of Epiphany was smaller than the big city cop shops they had had the pleasure of visiting, but bigger than most small towns. The building looked to be practically brand new. Holmes smiled when Sam mentioned this.

"It was renovated a few years back after Hurricane Katrina," she explained.

"I heard the Northshore took a real beating from the storm."

"Yeah, but in spite of what you might have heard on the news, FEMA came through for us in the aftermath. We received not only construction funds and new equipment for the department, but enough money to repair damage for the entire town as well. Sheriff Benedict saw to that," she said beaming proudly. "He was practically out there day and night with a picket sign trying to get Epiphany the money to rebuild. He was only an Assistant Deputy then, but Paul—"

Holmes caught herself, looked somewhat mortified. The two tried not to smile. "I mean, Sheriff Benedict said there wouldn't be a town left to save if we left it to the guys in charge. I think that's just one of many reasons he was elected when Huxley left a couple months ago."

"Sounds like a hell of a guy," said Dean.

"He is," she said, but there was a strained look in her eyes when she said it that made him wonder.

"He the one in charge of the Goldman and Nguyen murders?"

"No, you want Sergeant Elwood for that. He should be back from one of his many breaks by now."

Holmes scrunched her nose in an expression of disgust at the mention of her coworker's name. Sam picked up on it instantly.

"You and Sgt. Elwood don't get along, I take it?"

"Sgt. Elwood is what you'd call…an old fashioned cop."

"The kind that believes in rubber hoses and throwing away the key?" asked Dean.

"The kind that believes the only good cop is a male cop," she said with a tight smile, "and white."

"Oh," he said, noticing that Holmes had two strikes against her, being both female and African American. "I know it goes against the whole cop code, but why hasn't anyone bothered to report him?"

"I haven't tried personally, but I've heard of other members of the department who did and lost their jobs for it," Holmes said. The look on her face was a mixture of frustration and weariness. "Elwood and the former Sheriff were drinking buddies, so there was no getting rid of him then, but when Sheriff Huxley retired and Sheriff Benedict came in, we all thought things would be different."

"But they weren't," Sam said, finishing her train of thought.

She frowned. "Sheriff Benedict is…a hard man to know lately."

Sam exchanged a puzzled look with his brother and was about to question her further when they heard a young woman shouting from the bull pen.

"Sounds like the Sergeant is back from break," Holmes said with a sigh.

She gestured towards a red faced man with a comb over and a beer belly stretching his stained dress shirt over his belt buckle being chewed out by a young woman. She looked to be in her early twenties and her long dark hair was held back in a pony tail with a single lock of hair dyed bright red from root to tip. Both Dean and Sam could see tattoos peeking over the neck and shoulders of her white camisole. She might have been mistaken for just another low life waiting to be booked, but she didn't have that "used up" look about her. An older, conservatively dressed man was trying to hold her back from smacking the detective.

Holmes raised her eyebrows and smiled at the two Winchesters. "Have fun, you two."

Sam and Dean laughed nervously as she walked away, probably grateful to be as far away from the confrontation as possible.

"Excuse me?" the tattoo girl shouted in an angry, shocked tone. "What the hell did you just say?"

"I think you heard me," Sgt. Elwood said, smirking. He was looking the woman up and down in revulsion. "Or do you got bagels in your ears?"

"Listen up Barney Fife," she snapped.

"Alice!" the older man interjected, but the girl ignored him.

"My grandmother is—was a good person," she said, ignoring his words of warning. "She was worth ten of you on your best day and from what little I've seen of you, I'd say that day probably doesn't come around too often, you bigoted, disrespectful son of a bitch!"

Elwood glared at the woman called Alice, shouting obscenities at her. The older gentleman demanded to speak with the detective's superior.

"Yeah, your superior," Alice blurted, her tone full of loathing anger. "That shouldn't be too hard to find, should it?"

"Alice, go wait in the car," her companion said angrily. "I'll handle this."

"Better listen to your father, Jew girl," Elwood said.

The girl let out an insulted gasp before making a lunge for the tactless sergeant. Only her father quickly grabbing her arms stopped her from pummeling the man.

"Three guesses how this argument started," Sam said amused. "This Elwood guy's a real gem. I don't see how he could have stayed on the force long enough to make sergeant, drinking buddy or no drinking buddy."

They both winced when the girl kicked Elwood sharply in the shin.

"That Alice chick's got spunk," said Dean with the same smirk he had reserved for Officer Holmes' backside. "I do love a girl with spirit. And a lovely spirit too, if I do say so myself."

He turned his head at an angle to better appreciate her "spirit". It was becoming easier to see as the lack of A/C and the exertion of the fight caused her sweat soaked cammy to stick to her skin.

"Yeah," Sam snorted. "Like that's what you were looking at."

They weren't the only ones enjoying the show. Some of the other cops in the room had caught the action and were slowly inching towards the three. Sam gathered from their reluctant expressions that more than a few would have been happy enough to let the girl take a few more shots before coming to Elwood's assistance.

"Time for a rescue?" Sam said as the girl's father got between Alice and the sergeant.

Dean reluctantly nodded, obviously enjoying the show, too. As one, the Winchesters stepped up to the three and whipped out their phony badges.

"FBI," Dean shouted in a loud authoritative voice the three disregarded. "Yo! People! Waving a badge here."

Ignored, he exchanged an exasperated look with Sam and was about to dive into the group when someone let out a piercing whistle that caught everybody's attention.

All eyes turned to a tall, lanky man with dark hair and piercing dark eyes. He was young, couldn't have been older than thirty-five, but he had an air of authority that made him seem older. His gaze rested first on the Winchesters who stood, muscles tensed, ready for a fight, and then to Sgt. Elwood who's smug expression had turned fearful.

"Sergeant," He said with a hint of a Cajun accent. His tone was sensible but put upon. "Please let go of the young lady's arm before you bruise the poor thing."

The Sergeant, who had been grabbing the girl's arm, let go as quick as if he had been struck by lightening.

"Gentlemen," the man turned back to the Winchesters with a languid smile, "Officer Holmes informed me of your presence. Agents…"

He raised his eyebrows in a questioning gesture.

"I'm Agent Bloom and this is Agent Roeser," Dean said as they both showed the man their 'credentials'. "We're here to talk with Sergeant Elwood about the Nguyen and Goldman cases. And you are?"

"You Feds got no right steppin' into my case," Elwood unwisely shouted at the two.

The man gave Elwood a sharp look that had him clamping his mouth shut so fast his teeth clicked together.

"Sergeant, I think it's time for your break."

"But I just got back from—"

"Take another one," he said, his tone even, his eyes as cold as ice.

Elwood high tailed it out of there and the man turned back to the boys.

"I'm Sheriff Benedict," he said turning back to Sam and Dean. "Officer Holmes explained the reason for your visit. I'll be happy to oblige you gentlemen as soon as I have a few words with Mr. Goldman here. If that's alright with you?"

His words were calm and reasonable, but there was an undertone to them that brook no further discussion and made the hairs on their necks stand on end. Dean stared him down frowning, but Sam smiled at the Sheriff.

"Sure thing," he said taking his brother's arm. "We'll just wait for you here."

Sheriff Benedict nodded and ushered Mr. Goldman to his office a few feet away.

"Go wait in the car, Alice," her father said handing the girl his keys. "And please stay out of trouble."

The girl's lips tightened into a frown and her back stiffened, but her father gave her a weary pleading look that said he was too tired to argue. Her shoulders relaxed. She nodded, took the keys, and turned to leave.

Sam nudged Dean who nodded in silent agreement. He followed Alice out of the bull pen while Dean waited outside of the Sheriff's office. Dean watched as Benedict peered past them through the doorway, his eyes following Alice as she walked away. He wasn't smiling. Alice turned to catch his glance and the smile was back like sunshine peeking behind a storm cloud. Alice didn't smile back.

Sam tracked Alice down in the parking lot sitting in the open door of a silver Lexus, writing in what at first glance appeared to be a black leather-bound bible. As he came closer, he realized it was a journal partially filled with delicately looped handwriting. When he found her, she was busy sketching devil horns and fangs onto a good depiction of Sgt. Elwood.

"You've got a good eye," he said pointing at the sketch. "I think you really captured the sergeant."

Alice looked up with a frown that softened when saw who it was.

"Thanks," she said with a wry smile. "The horns were a dead give away, I take it."

"Real demons don't have horns. They look just like you and me," he said and caught himself, "probably…if they existed, I mean."

"Tell me about it," she said heaving a sigh. She set the journal down in the passenger seat and held out her hand for Sam to shake. "I'm Alice Goldman. My grandmother was Esther Goldman, but I guess you know that."

Sam shook her hand and nodded. "I gathered that from the altercation inside."

She let out a tired, humorless laugh. Sam noticed the dark circles around her eyes. He wondered how long it had been since the girl had a decent night's sleep. Probably not since she first heard of her grandmother's death.

"Sorry about that."

"Don't worry about it," he said his expression consoling. "My partner and I have seen worse on the job, believe me."

"Your partner? Are you a cop?"

"FBI," he showed her his badge. "We're here regarding your grandmother's death."

"Why would the Feds be interested in this?"

"It might be related to another case we're working on. May I ask you a few questions?"

"I don't know how much I can help you. My grandmother and I weren't exactly close," she said with hunched shoulders. Her eyes glistened with tears waiting to be shed. "I kind of kept my entire family at arms length. They all had these big plans for me but I just couldn't be what they wanted, you know?"

"Trust me, I know," Sam gave her an understanding nod, trying not to think just how close to home that statement hit. "So she didn't contact you before her death?"

Alice was quiet for a second. She peered over to the passenger seat and frowned. "Now that I think of it, she got in touch with me out of the blue a couple weeks ago. She traveled all the way to New Orleans to visit me at my apartment, which was weird since she rarely leaves Epiphany."

"Did she want anything specific? Talk about anything out of the ordinary?"

"She wanted to know if I still kept a journal," she said reaching for the leather-bound book she had been sketching in. "She gave this to me when I turned twelve and I'm just now starting to write in it."

"May I?" Sam asked, holding out his hand.

She started to hand it to him, but hesitated.

"You're not going to read it, are you?" she asked, looking pained.

"Please?" He smiled. "It might help with your grandmother's case."

Alice sighed and handed the journal to him. Sam frowned when he read the preface Esther had written for her granddaughter.

"'To my loving Zeisele,'" Sam read. He turned to Alice with a questioning look.

"That was her nick name for me," she smiled, looking slightly embarrassed. "It means 'sweety'."

"What do you think she meant when she wrote this?" he asked showing her Esther's preface. "What's a 'daughter of the commandment'?"

"Nothing mysterious about that," Alice laughed. "According to Jewish law, when a child reaches the age of responsibility at around twelve or thirteen, they become a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Translated from Hebrew, that means son or daughter of the commandment."

_Your destiny is hidden beyond these pages, waiting to be discovered_, Sam read. That was interesting.

"What about the last sentence," he said pointing to it.

"Bubbe Esther was a writer," She shrugged. "You know how writers are. I figured she was just being dramatic."

"This was the only message she left for you?" Sam asked, wondering what Esther had been trying to tell her granddaughter. "Did she write in any of the other pages?"

Alice shook her head.

Sam examined the journal, searching for tell tale signs of tampering, things hidden within the binding, but found none. He flipped through the slightly yellowed pages while trying to respect Alice's privacy, but the artwork was eye catching.

"This is your grandmother?" he said as he came to a page filled with drawings of an old woman with deep, melancholy eyes.

Alice nodded.

"Why does she look so sad in your drawings?"

She shrugged. "I guess that's just how I remember her. You know, she survived a death camp? She watched her entire family murdered by the Nazis. You would think God would cut the woman a break and let her die in her sleep or of old age or something peaceful and painless."

The tears she had been holding back finally sprang forth, trickling down her cheeks, making her lower lip quiver. Sam knelt down beside her and offered her a handkerchief. She took it and smiled gratefully into his sympathetic eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said sopping up the tears. "It's been a really hard week."

"It's okay," said Sam. "I understand."

"You ever get the feeling that God doesn't give a damn about his creation?" she said, lip quivering. "Like he just lets us run wild for his entertainment?"

Sam spotted Dean waving to him from the station entrance. He stood up, exhaled noisily, and frowned at the heavens.

"More and more everyday."

After a brief call to their superior in Washington—Bobby Singer—Sheriff Benedict led them back to the morgue to view the bodies. It was what they expected in a corpse depository with the sterile smell of antiseptic cleaner and blessed cold. After the heat of the parking lot and the police station, the freezing air of the morgue was practically refreshing. Dead bodies had to be kept refrigerated to delay decomposition, more so in the deep-south where even in the early spring temperatures could reach up to the mid eighties. The morgue in Epiphany was no different.

"This is the only area in the damn place with working A/C," the Sheriff explained, reading their thoughts. "We had a tropical storm a few days back, put the system on the fritz, but this area runs on emergency power."

"Bet you got people outside queuing to be in here," Sam said joking.

Benedict smiled. "I've been guilty of catching a break in here myself."

"The bodies don't creep you out?" Dean asked.

"The dead can't hurt you, friend," he laughed. "It's the living you gotta watch out for. Didn't you know that?"

Dean smiled at the Sheriff's little joke, but his smile was strained.

He led them down a hall to a room marked 'Pathology' where they were greeted by an older man in his fifties wearing a white lab coat, wire-rimmed bifocals, and a full head of curly red hair peppered with grey. The guy was built like a line backer and had a face like an aged Howdy-Doody.

"This here's our head pathologist, Dr. Stan Vincent," Sheriff Benedict said introducing the man.

"You boys are the Feds Paul told me about," he said with a slight twang to his accent. He gave them a friendly smile and held out his hand.

"Guilty," Dean said wincing at the pathologist's bear like handshake.

Sam wisely pretended to be too busy slipping on a pair of latex gloves to notice it was his turn.

"I'll just leave you to it," Sheriff Benedict said, grinning in amusement at Dean's discomfort. "When you all are done in here, you can just stop by my office and I'll give you the paperwork we've gathered on both investigations."

Benedict walked down the corridor leading back to the bull pen while Dr. Vincent led the Winchesters into the autopsy room.

Inside, there was enough room for two metal tables where autopsies were performed and a wall filled with metal refrigerated cabinets where cadavers were kept. He lifted the latch on one of the cabinets and pulled out a shelf containing a black body bag. Both Sam and Dean wrinkled their nose at the cloying smell of decay.

"I believe this is your guy," Dr. Vincent said.

The smell went from bad to worse as the Doctor unzipped the plastic bag to reveal the late Robert Nguyen. What they saw was a complete mess.

"God, look at the chest cavity," Sam said trying to hide his look of revulsion. "It looks like it was torn instead of cut."

He conferred a questioning glance to Dr. Vincent who nodded.

"The flesh was torn and the ribs were pulled apart at the spine and spread out like wings. Didn't have to make much of an incision for the autopsy. The killer did most of my work for me," he said with a humorless laugh.

"The ribs were spread out like wings, you say?" Dean questioned and Dr. Vincent nodded.

"They call it a 'blood eagle'," he explained. "Historians say it was a method of torture and execution used by the early Norse, performed by cutting the ribs at the spine, breaking the ribs so they resembled blood-stained wings, and pulling the lungs out."

"Ouch," Dean said, with raised eyebrows.

Vincent nodded. "You think that's bad? Sometimes, they poured salt on the poor bastard's wounds to make the pain that much more unbearable."

"Because having your ribs and lungs pulled out of your body isn't torture enough?" Sam said incredulously.

Dr. Vincent shrugged.

"What was the primary cause of death?"

"I'm thinking having his ribs and lungs ripped out kinda did the job there," Dean snorted.

"Strangely enough, he probably would have held on an hour or two longer if it weren't for the other wound," Dr. Vincent pointed just below victim's neck. "Check out the trauma around the cervical area."

The flesh above the sternum was torn as if from a bite wound and burned around the frayed flesh. Sam mouthed the question, 'Were? Skin-walker?' when the doc's back was turned. Dean shrugged.

"I'm thinking this might be a wild animal attack, bear possibly," the doctor said, confirming their suspicions. "If you look close, you can just make out the bite marks around the neck area, though it's hard to see with all the damage."

"What about the burn marks?" Sam asked. "What could have caused that?"

Vincent shrugged. "You got me there. All I know is no human did this much damage, especially not with those teeth marks."

When he was certain they had gotten a good look, he zipped the bag up, closed the cabinet, and opened the one next to it.

"This is the other victim," he said unzipping the bag. "Mrs. Esther Goldman. Don't get many celebrities in here. This is one that I could have lived without having the pleasure of working on."

Esther's body was in worse condition than Mr. Nguyen's. She was practically torn limb from limb, beaten and bitten beyond all recognition. Unlike Nguyen, there were no burned marks on her body that they could see, but the chest cavity had the same tell tears and broken ribs as the other victim.

"And I thought our guy had it bad," Dean said, cringing and sharing a look of horror with his brother.

"She did not go gentle into that good night, that's for certain," Dr. Vincent sighed. "These are two very confusing cases."

"Why do you say that?" asked Sam.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say these two victims were killed by the same animal."

"Could they have been," asked Dean. "Killed by the same animal, I mean?"

The doctor's brow furrowed in bewilderment, "Normally I'd say yes, but from what I've been told, the two bodies were found miles apart and they died within hours of each other. I can't come up with a reasonable explanation as to how a bear or some other animal of a similar size walked all the way from Big Branch National Park where Mr. Nguyen's body was found, all the way to Esther Goldman's house in Epiphany. Not unless there's a bear out there somewhere who knows how to drive."

They left the building carrying two boxes filled with the case files for the Nguyen and Goldman murders. As they made their way to their Impala, Dean kept looking over his shoulder towards the building behind him.

"Sheriff Benedict was awfully cooperative," Dean said, while putting the boxes away in the trunk of the car.

"You think he might have been a little too cooperative?" said Sam, reading his brother's train of thought.

"And creepy?"

Sam thought about it for awhile. "There was a certain creep vibe going on there. You think he might have something to do with this? Like maybe he's a were or a skin-walker trying to cover up a feeding frenzy?"

Dean shook his head. "If he is, he's being awfully helpful. It seemed like he was just going through the motions when he asked to speak with our 'superior'. I mean, he didn't even ask for a warrant or anything. If I was some kind of bugged out fur faced bastard and I wanted to hide what I had done, I wouldn't let anyone near those bodies. Hell, the bodies wouldn't have even been found!"

"And I don't see something like a were being strong enough to take on an angel," Sam shrugged, "but he's worth keeping an eye on, at least."

Dean nodded and slammed the trunk shut. That task down, they both climbed into the front seat and were just getting comfortable when they immediately jumped in their seats and out of their skins when a familiar voice spoke from the backseat.

"What did you discover?"

"Jesus, Cas!" Dean shouted. "Didn't I tell you never to do that?"

"Many times," Cas said, unabashed. "What did you find out?"

"Hello to you too," Sam said through gritted teeth.

"I don't have time for greetings and salutations," Cas said. He looked slightly more animated than usual which meant something was up. "What did you find out?"

Sam and Dean went over everything they had learned including the journal, the creepy Sheriff Benedict, and the possibility of a were or skin-walker attack.

"Barkiel was killed bad, but that was nothing compared to what this guy did to Esther Goldman," Dean said. "She wasn't just killed. She was over killed."

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "Who ever did it was getting their rage on in a big way."

"You said Barkiel's neck was torn and burned?" Cas asked. "Not stabbed?"

"More like bitten through," Dean shook his head. "That mean anything?"

"To kill an angel, you have to destroy our Grace," Cas said, visibly distressed. "Destroying an angel's Grace leaves a mark."

"The burn marks?" Sam asked.

Cas nodded. "If he had been killed by an angelic weapon, there would have been a stab wound with burn marks around the wound. If there was no stab wound, he wasn't killed by any of my kind."

"Not necessarily," said Sam. "There was a lot of damage to the area. It might have been hard to see with all the bite marks."

"I'll have to see the autopsy photos to be certain, but even so, how would a skin-walker not only have gotten Barkiel to leave his charge, but take his weapon off him as well," Cas shook his head. "There is something very strange about this case."

"Is there anything else that can kill an angel besides an angelic sword?"

"Up until today," Cas said leaning back in his seat and frowning, "I would have said no."

"What else is going on, Cas?" Dean asked, staring a hole into the angel. "You said you didn't have time for chit chat. Something's up. What is it?"

Cas frowned. "We've had another disappearance, an important one."

"Who?" asked Sam.

Cas stared at them for a few moments, as if debating whether to tell them or not.

"Dude," Dean snapped. "Don't play coy with us now. Who's missing?"

"Another archangel?" asked Sam.

"Tzela," Cas nodded. He didn't look happy at all. "The current guardian of Charles Shurley."


	4. Chapter 4: To Dream Perchance To Meet

**Book Four: To Dream Perchance to Meet**

She was wandering in a desert, lost with no memory as to how she came to be here. The hot sun baked her skin bright red with a stinging sunburn. The howling wind lifted the clouds of sand into the air, assaulting her eyes, scratching her face and arms. It was in her hair, in her eyes and mouth, everywhere. There was nothing to see for miles except sand dunes and what measly scrub the desert was able to grow. Thirsty and hot, she didn't know where she was going; only that she had to keep moving. Something was following her, something terrible. If it caught her, it would be worse than dieing.

Without taking time to stop, Alice glanced over her shoulder. The shallow impressions of her foot prints were being erased by the wind along with something that had made an "S" like indention between her feet. Snake prints, she thought, but where was the snake? She shuffled faster not wanting to find out.

The wind picked up, obscuring her view of the land. She could barely see three feet in front of her, but a pulsating light in the distance caught her attention. She couldn't see what it was from here—water maybe or an emergency beacon—but she knew instinctively she had to get to it quick before the monster caught up to her. It might be her only salvation.

Body aching, Alice trudged through the desert towards the light. She found its source lying at her feet, a strange looking short sword made of a silver-like metal. She knelt down and picked it up. As she did, the air became calm and everything became quiet. She looked up to find a stubble cheeked man wearing a rumpled robe and worn slippers standing over her. The man scanned the desert landscape, brow furrowed in confusion.

"Is this a dream?" he asked, twisting the hem of his robe nervously. "This feels like a prophesy dream, but it's not like the ones I usually have. The ones I usually have are more real, like watching a movie, or remembering a scene from a book. This is more symbolic, you know what I mean?"

Alice stood up and shook her head, "Not really."

"Of course, if this were one of my _other_ dreams we'd both be naked and rolling around in the sand," he said with an anxious laugh and a hopeful expression.

"I don't think so," she said, somewhat mortified that she was wearing the same flimsy night gown she had gone to bed in. His hopeful expression wilted under her seething glare.

"Are you…one of them?" he asked, glancing at the sword in her hand.

Alice shook her head in confusion. "One of whom?"

"One of the angels. The one Cas put in charge of guarding me disappeared. I mean, I don't usually see him physically anyway, but Cas says he's missing. He wouldn't lie about something like that."

"Cas?" she asked, with one raised eyebrow.

"Castiel. He's an angel too."

"You have angels guarding you?" Alice said, eyeing the man in his frayed flannel robe. "Talk to a lot of them, do you?"

"Not really," he said with a shrug. "They usually don't show themselves to me unless something serious is going down. Like for the apocalypse or…something…"

His words trailed off, probably realizing just how insane he sounded.

_He's right about one thing,_ Alice thought. _This must be a dream_. _One of the craziest damn dreams I've ever had_.

"I followed the light," he said pointing at the sword. "I saw you holding that, I just thought…"

Alice examined the sword, turning it over in her hands. "It's not mine. I found it in the sand."

"That's weird. They never leave these things just lying around."

"The angels, you mean?" Alice said not bothering to hide the cynicism in her tone.

"They're real," he insisted.

Alice gave the scruffy man a look that was older than the desert. "Uh-huh, sure."

"Hey, I'm the one dreaming this," said the scruffy man glaring at her, "which means you are apart of my subconscious mind. I refuse to argue with my own subconscious over something I already know exists."

"I think I'll follow that advice myself since this is _my_ dream."

The man frowned, looked as if he was about to argue with her, when the wind picked up once again. Alice raised her arms to her face to shield her eyes, mouth, and nose. Sand shifted beneath her feet and she took a hasty step back. The crazy man in the robe did the same. The wind died down and he was staring at something in the sand. Alice looked down to find the bones of what at first appeared to be a human skeleton until she realized the shoulder blades extended further than they should. They were like the skeletal wings of a bird.

"What the hell is that?" she shouted, but the man wasn't paying attention to her.

He was shaking his head, eyes wide with horror as he scanned the landscape surrounding them. She turned to see what he was staring at and realized the bones at her feet weren't the only ones. The landscape was full of the strange winged fossils clasping swords like the one in her hand.

"What did this?" he said practically screaming. "What the hell can kill and angel like this?"

The fear she had when she first found herself wandering returned. She drew closer to him, clutching his arm tightly with one hand while grasping the sword defensively in the other without knowing which direction to point it.

"Something was following me," she told him. "There were prints in the sand."

"Foot prints?"

"Snake, I think."

He frowned. "Maybe whatever did this is gone now."

He gave her another hopeful look, and she wanted to agree with him. Just as he said it, they were hit by another sand storm. Alice held on tight to him, nearly doubled over by the wind. It was like trying to withstand hurricane force winds.

"I don't think it's gone," she screamed into his ear, but her voice was drowned out by the howling wind.

_This is all a dream_, she told her self. _I'll wake up any minute now and this will just be something to write in my journal, something interesting to sketch_.

The storm ended as suddenly as it began, knocking them both off their feet. She fell on top of him, coughing up sand. She wiped the sand out of her eyes and extricated from his lap. The bones were gone and in front of them stood a short, squat olive tree. They stared at the tree, exchanged baffled looks, and then stared back.

"What's an almond tree doing out here in the middle of the desert?" he said taking a few cautious steps towards it.

"That's not an almond tree," Alice said following close behind. This was familiar. She had dreamt this before, she knew. The smell drifting from the tree was making her stomach growl. "It's an olive tree."

"It's an almond tree, see," he said bending over to pluck a single fallen olive from the ground. It was rotten and slimy. He blew the sand from its oily surface, rubbed it on the lapel of his robe, and crinkled his nose as he sniffed it. "God, I hate these things. When I was ten, my Uncle Rick sent my parents a whole bag of these from Spain. I bit into one and five seconds later my entire throat swelled up like a balloon."

Alice took the olive from his hand, examined it. "What kind of moron are you? This is an olive."

"I'm not a moron, you idiot. And this isn't an Olive. It's an almond," he said and made a grab for it. Alice dodged his miserable attempt.

"It's an olive and it's mine!"

"It's an almond!" he shouted chasing her around the tree. "Give it back!"

She felt like a cartoon mouse being chased by a cat as she dodged to the right then dodged left when he faked a dodge going the same way. He almost caught her but a sharp kick to the shin she gave him slow him down. In spite of his bruised leg, the chase continued with no hope of an end.

"I thought you hated these things," she called out to him from behind the tree, finding her second wind.

"You're right," he said and froze. Alice crashed into him and they both fell on their backsides. She scurried away from him hiding behind the tree, tentatively peeking around the trunk in case this was another fake, and ready to bolt the second their chase resumed. But he stood there immobile, staring at the tree, confused. "I can't stand them."

"Then why are you chasing me?"

"Why are you running? You like almonds that much?"

"Olives, you mean."

The man made an exasperated gesture with his hands. "Almond, Olive, tomato, tamoto, whatever!"

The question caught her off guard. It occurred to her she didn't particularly like olives. She wasn't deathly allergic, but they reminded her of her grandfather's funeral. He had died when she was seven years old and someone had sent her grandmother a vegetable tray for the condolence meal. Bubbe Esther had told her that olives were technically a fruit. Alice remembered biting into the soft green olive expecting it to be sweet and juicy like a peach. She spit the bitter thing out seconds after it hit her tastes buds. Now just the smell of them made her sick. The fact that she knew they were even bitterer before cultivation and curing, and that the olive in her hand was dark, squishy, and rotted through, should have made her stomach roll with greasy waves of nausea. Instead, her mouth watered for a bite of the disgusting thing. It took every ounce of will to let it slip from her fingers.

Alice turned to face the man, but he wasn't looking at her or the olive. He was pointing at the branches above her head in absolute terror. His lips quivered as if trying to tell her something, but the fear kept the words locked away. She looked up in horror movie slow motion. Her eyes widened when she saw the man with the rotting face staring down at her smiling through razor sharp teeth. A forked tongue slithered between them and it laughed with a hiss.

"Run!" the man in the robe finally screamed.

Alice stood there frozen as the monster made one swift lunge for her. She didn't even have time to scream before it was on top of her, mouth open wide like a snake's. The creature lunged towards her face ready to devour her.

Alice woke up covered in sweat, a scream caught in her throat. Heart racing and fighting to catch her breath, she struggled to remember where she was. Her eyes adjusted to the dark, took in the room. She was safe in the bed she had grown up in, her old bedroom at her parent's house. A peek at the red numbers of the digital clock on the nightstand revealed it to be two in the morning. She took a deep breath and let it out as her brain replayed the nightmare.

There was a desert and human bones with bird wings and a scruffy looking man in a robe, but he was harmless. There was the tree again, just one this time.

And the monster. She closed her eyes tight, willing the image to go away, but like the fear, it stuck with her.

Alice groaned. No way would she get back to sleep now. The funeral was in another few hours. She thought of getting up to get some coffee, but walking around her parent's house in the middle of the night made her feel like an intruder. She wanted to be back in her apartment, comfortable and away from all this insanity.

With a long sigh, she untangled herself from her covers, fumbled for the sketch book and pencil on the night stand, and began to draw.


End file.
